Honeybee (2 page)

Your buddy in the early hours. Your buddy with the scratchy throat who didn't sleep well. On the other side of the earth he is rising, making a single cup of coffee, sitting down at a small wooden table. Your buddy who hasn't shaved in weeks. Your buddy in Nuevo Laredo missing the old days the easy crossings of borders the wanderings in streets without fear. Your buddy who doesn't want to see any bullets is typing a letter he will not sign. Your buddy with the aching wrist. Your buddy with high hopes watching sun come up over calm water thinking, we'll make it, maybe. Your buddy who sends 17 letters in 14 days. A surge of random observations but nothing is random. No one alone. The bold buddy and the shy one with a closet of stacked pages. The young buddy whose grandfather the great writer has been hiding for years. Your buddy in Japan who wishes your heart to feel like a primrose. Your buddy in Glasgow eating a radish as he types in golden light. Your buddy in a head scarf begging for sense. Your buddy in a sari who bosses the men. Your buddy who types with three fingers like you do. Your buddy in Australia your weary buddy in the airport lounge your buddy in the village library your buddy in the wireless hotel room
where even the rod under the clothes lights up your buddy on the brink your buddy who was reminded what words could do after he swore they could do nothing anymore your buddy in Bethlehem who wonders if anyone listens your buddy who is feeling weak your buddy who tells what is really going on behind the scenes your buddy who refuses to back down your lost buddy who won't speak to you punishing you for reasons unknown even she must be typing to someone else by now, trust in this as you say good-bye give it up, typing will help you get through it no matter where you are when the restaurants close and the little shops you loved bolt their doors for the last time and the artist you wish you'd known better dies suddenly, you grip the memory of minor messages sent back and forth only months ago. Who else should you be typing to right now? Who else is on the way out? All of us. Everyone typing in the late and early in the far reaches in the remote unknowns in the heart of the diagnosis near the fishing huts with CATCH OF THE DAY signs the names of fish scrawled on blackboards by the whispering sea.

I was 17, my family had just moved to San Antonio. A local magazine featured an alluring article about a museum called the McNay, an old mansion once the home of an eccentric many-times-married watercolorist named Marian Koogler McNay. She had deeded it to the community to become a museum upon her death. I asked my friend Sally, who drove a cute little convertible and had moved to Texas a year before we did, if she wanted to go there. Sally said, “Sure.” She was a good friend that way. We had made up a few words in our own language and could dissolve into laughter just by saying them. Our mothers thought we were a bit odd. On a sunny Saturday afternoon, we drove over to Broadway. Sally asked, “Do you have the address of this place?” “No,” I said, “just drive very slowly and I'll recognize it, there was a picture in the magazine.” I peered in both directions and pointed, saying, “There, there it is, pull in!” The parking lot under some palm trees was pretty empty. We entered, excited. The museum was free. Right away, the spirit of the arched doorways, carved window frames, and elegant artwork overtook us. Sally went left, I went right. A group of people seated in some chairs in the lobby stopped talking and stared at us.

 

“May I help you?” a man said. “No,” I said. “We're fine.” I didn't like to talk to people in museums. Tours and docents got on my nerves. What if they talked a long time about a painting you weren't that interested in? I took a deep breath, moved on to another painting—fireworks over a patio in Mexico, maybe? There weren't very good tags in this museum. In fact, there weren't any. I stood back and gazed. Sally had gone upstairs. The people in the lobby had stopped chatting. They seemed very nosy, keeping their eyes on me with irritating curiosity. What was their problem? I turned down a hallway. Bougainvilleas and azaleas pressed up right against the windows. Maybe we should have brought a picnic. Where was the Moorish courtyard? I saw some nice sculptures in another room, and a small couch. This would be a great place for reading. Above the couch hung a radiant print by Paul Klee, my favorite artist, blues and pinks merging softly in his own wonderful way. I stepped closer. Suddenly I became aware of a man from the lobby standing behind me in the doorway.
“Where do you think you are?” he asked. I turned sharply. “The McNay Art Museum!” He smiled then, and shook his head. “Sorry to tell you. The McNay is three blocks over, on New Braunfels Street. Take a right when you go out of our driveway, then another right.” “What is this place?” I asked, still confused. He said, “Well, we thought it was our home.” My heart jolted. I raced past him to the bottom of the staircase and called out, “Sally! Come down immediately! Urgent!” I remember being tempted to shout something in our private language, but we didn't have a word for this. Sally came to the top of the stairs smiling happily and said, “You have to come up here, there's some really good stuff! And there are old beds too!” “No, Sally, no,” I said, as if she were a dog, or a baby. “Get down here. Speed it up. This is an emergency.” She stepped elegantly down the stairs as if in a museum trance, looking puzzled. I just couldn't tell her out loud in front of those people what we had done. I actually pushed her toward the front door, waving my hand at the family in the chairs, saying, “Sorry, ohmygod, please forgive us, you have a really nice place.” Sally
stared at me in the parking lot. When I told her, she covered her mouth and doubled over with laughter, shaking. We were still in their yard. I imagined them inside looking out the windows at us. She couldn't believe how long they let us look around without saying anything, either. “That was really friendly of them!” “Get in the car,” I said sternly. “This is mortifying.”

 

The real McNay was fabulous, splendid, but we felt a little nervous the whole time we were there. Van Gogh, Picasso, Tamayo. This time, there were tags. This time, we stayed together, in case anything else weird happened.

 

We never told anyone.

 

Thirty years later, a nice-looking woman approached me in a public place. “Excuse me,” she said. “I need to ask a strange question. Did you ever, by any chance, enter a residence, long ago, thinking it was the McNay Museum?”

 

Thirty years later, my cheeks still burned. “Yes. But how do you know? I never told anyone.”

 

“That was my home. I was a teenager sitting with my family talking in the living room. Before you came over, I never realized what a beautiful place I lived in. I never felt lucky before. You thought it was a museum. My feelings changed about my parents after that too. They had good taste. I have always wanted to thank you.”

In the town of Robert Burns called Dumfries, one of the many towns in southern Scotland that claim the beloved bard who lived so large (many children, many loves), I took a wrong turn, walking. Missed the red sandstone landmark church, kept going by the River Nith, Robert's river he tramped along regularly, never imagining (I would think not) a white statue of himself in the center square. I walked till it was clear I was not getting anywhere I needed to be. Got a little nervous. Stopped to ask two Scottish men in checkered shorts who chorused conflictingly
go forward—nay, go back! I noticed you,
said one,
as I was driving home, and you looked lost.
One said,
go right,
the other
go left
, go up, go in, go out, till the younger said,
Okay listen to him.
Him said,
Take a wee path. You'll barely see it. There's a donkey in the field on the right.
A donkey?
Aye, a donkey. There are leaning trees, leaning like a cover for the path. Go between them. It's truly wee, I tell ye. Look hard. Walk between the walls and the fence and you'll find yourself right there, right there!
They wished me well. Younger said,
If you get lost, it's all his fault.
No donkey was spotted but dozens of rabbits cavorting on a wide flat green. And no single wee path but twenty
perhaps and as for leaning trees, weren't there groves in all directions? Oh Robert Burns, I got lost in your land, a little lonesome, but I felt your poems in the soles of my feet.